


a hole in the world

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Series: Less than 12 days of Xmas [1]
Category: One Direction (Band), The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones, Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, With apologies to Diana Wynne Jones, zayn is magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn lives in a castle where he is learning to do magic.  No, not that one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a hole in the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunshinedil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinedil/gifts).



> My doctor said to eat an apple every day. My best friend says to stop  
> sleeping with guys with messiah complexes. My mother said she is  
> pretty sure she had sex with my father so I can't be some new  
> Asian Jesus.
> 
> \- Chen Chen, "I'm not a religious person but"

Most nine-lived enchanters do big stupid things like blow the roofs off of houses, making themselves very hard to overlook. Zayn hadn't done anything at all to make himself conspicuous. One day an old lady just showed up at his house, gave him a friendly sort of look, and told him they'd been searching everywhere for him. It's gone rather downhill since then.

He doesn't mind it so much, apart from the loneliness. There are no other kids at Chrestomanci castle besides Zayn. But he doesn't have to wait in line to use the bathroom in the mornings anymore and the lessons are alright, although he still prefers proper books to spell ones. The castle has no shortage of either of those, and he can read all the ones he wants to, excepting those in the towers, which are all quite advanced magic. Everyone is much better off without him doing any of that just yet, himself especially.

There's a whole section of the library dedicated to books from other worlds. A lot of them are in languages he can't read, although Chrestomanci says that he'll probably get over that soon enough, what with his penchant for words. Chrestomanci also said to be careful, that being the case, because some of those books could be a bit dangerous.

"I don't read many of them myself," he'd said, handing Zayn a big red volume bound in a scaly kind of leather. "The previous Chrestomanci was more fond of that sort of thing."

Zayn likes even the books that he can't read, the ones from worlds not like his own at all, which he supposes means he's fond of that sort of thing as well. He likes looking at the writing, some of it long and spindly, some of it all jumbled up. He even found one where the jumbles unfurl themselves to make pictures, although sometimes the pictures are a bit risqué. He hadn't minded that until Millie, the old lady who had showed up at his door, told him it was a kind of mind-reading book that showed him what he wanted to see. The way she smiled at him then had made him choke and put it back on the shelf to never look at again. Not in the library, anyway.

It's a one of those other world books he's got in hand now. The letters all stay in place and there's no mention of magic, but he likes the story alright. It's all about a guy who meets a cannibal and then gets a job on a whaling ship where the captain is a complete nutter on account of having lost his leg because of a whale. There was a chapter where the author spent an awful long time talking about how to turn a whale penis into a coat, but otherwise it's been pretty decent.

Besides the books, the best things about the castle are the gardens. There's a wide verdant lawn on all sides, broken up by big flowering trees and very straight, tidy hedges. Zayn's favorite place is well back past the rose bushes, where he can lean against the crumbly stone wall. He never sees anyone back here except the occasional gardener, but they leave him alone so long as he doesn't try to climb the wall or pick any of the flowers.

Today he's barely sat down and found his place before there's a loud rustle from one of the trees and a gardener appears out of nowhere, the way they always seem to.

"You're not scrumping," the gardener says, squinting at him, "are you?"

Zayn holds up his book so that the big gold letters on the cover are visible, and after another moment of squinting at the book and then at him again, the gardener disappears just as quickly as he came. They're a suspicious lot, gardeners, at least in Zayn's experience.

"What even is scrumping?" Zayn asks the empty air and, to his surprise, the air answers back:

"A form of stealing."

"Well I'm not."

"Neither am I," says the air, then rustles around in the leaves of the tree, and then becomes a boy. He has brown hair and sort of a big nose and he hangs easily from a branch of the tree, his feet a long way off the ground.

"What are you doing?" Zayn asks.

The boy looks back up into the tree and says, "The chestnuts are ripe."

"That's not scrumping?"

"Not really," the boy says. "It's only for conkers."

"Brilliant," Zayn says, setting his book aside to see for himself.

The boy pulls himself up into the tree almost as easily as he dropped down out of it, and Zayn's not sure he can do that, but the boy offers him a hand up and he manages it after all.

…

"Are you really magic?" Liam asks, as Zayn struggles to get the aglet of his shoelace through the chestnut. He doesn't feel particularly magic, is the thing about it. Chrestomanci and his teacher Marianne say that he's got magic up to his ears, but that he's always had it, so it's hard for him to tell.

"It's like colorblindness," Millie had told him one evening over her knitting, needles moving so speedily it made her look as if she had more arms than was usual. "You wouldn't know you were at all unless someone pointed it out."

Zayn takes the hand drill back from Liam to try and widen the hole in his chestnut a bit more. "Everyone says I am, but I can't do much. I'm not sure I've got all the magic they think I do."

"Even if you haven't got loads of it, at least you've got some," says Liam. He leans back to give another practice swing of his conker, squinting an eye closed as he aims at nothing. "I bet being magic is ace."

"What's yours like?"

Liam's shot swings around and comes so close to Zayn he can feel it whizz by.

"I'm not," Liam says, winding his conker up around his hand like a promise not to swing it again, his smile apologetic.

"What do you mean?"

Liam shrugs. "No one in my family's magic. We're all normal. Not that you're–"

Zayn waves it off. "But you're here."

"Yeah."

"No one comes in Chrestomanci castle unless they're invited. You can't climb the wall or anything."

"I didn't climb the wall. There's a gap in one of the shrubs." Liam turns to point the way he'd come. "The magic must have worn off there."

"I don't think it does wear off," says Zayn, although he's not sure. There are loads of spells on the castle. Who's to say someone would notice if there was a crack in just one of them?

"Well maybe it was your magic," Liam says. "Maybe you invited me. By wanting a friend and all."

"Like an open invitation?"

Liam shrugs again. "Do you want help?" he asks, pointing at the chestnut, where Zayn has gotten the drill stuck in at an odd angle.

"Yes, please," Zayn says, and leans in to watch.

…

Liam comes to visit twice a week, so long as it's not raining, and only in the afternoons because of school and his father's grocery in Bowbridge, where he helps on the weekends. That's how he came to the castle the first time, helping his father do a delivery. He found the gap in the hedge one day while he was running from some of the boys from the village.

"Not running," he insists, "just avoiding. They're not very nice."

Zayn thinks he probably was running, though. Some days Liam comes to see him and he's got bruises or scrapes or looks like he's been crying. Today he's got a cut on his lip that bleeds a little every time he smiles or talks too much, but he won't stop doing either.

Zayn hands him a handkerchief and Liam trades him the chestnut he keeps in his pocket, as a promise to give it back.

"Do you think there's magic that could make them not see me?" Liam asks, voice a little garbled from where he's trying to keep his mouth still while he talks.

"Probably. There's magic for all kinds of things. We could turn you into something instead. Like a bear. They wouldn't mess with you if you were a bear." Zayn puts his arms up over his head, takes a clawless swipe at Liam, who falls back laughing.

"A big brown bear," he says. He smiles up at the wide green spread of the oak tree they're sat under, and the sun coming in through the leaves mottles him with light and shadow like camouflage.

Zayn moves around until he can lay down with his head next to Liam's. "You'd probably just turn into a teddy bear anyway."

"That'd be alright too," Liam says, dabbing at his lip again. "Then I wouldn't have to go to school anymore and I could live here with you, couldn't I?"

"Definitely."

…

Apart from Liam, the only kids who come to the castle are from Italy. They visit for two weeks with their parents during the summer, and so for two weeks Zayn speaks slow and mumbly Italian while the kids speak slow and mumbly English. His head hurts by the end of it, from all the bad translating, but Chrestomanci says it's good practice.

This is how Zayn learns that he will be going to Italy in the autumn, not for a visit but to stay.

"Caprona is home to some of the greatest magicians in any world," Chrestomanci tells him. They're sat on the lawn for tea, Chrestomanci and Marianne and Millie and even Julia, Millie's daughter come for a visit. Everyone smiles knowledgeably and talks for a while about how gifted Caprona's magicians are, how lovely the city is, how good the weather, and no one really seems to notice that Zayn doesn't have anything to say at all.

Marianne adds sugar to her tea and says: "It'll be very good for you. They're masters of spellcraft, which is undoubtedly where your natural talents lie. Plus there will be other people your age about."

"More of them than you could ask for," Julia adds.

"More of them than you might wish, at times," says Chrestomanci, and that is that.

…

Caprona is a very old, very cramped up sort of city so soaked in magic that the whole place nearly fizzles with it. Zayn lives at Casa Montana and then Casa Petrocchi and then back again, over and over, because everyone has something to teach him. And there are a lot of everyones in Caprona.

He learns to speak Italian like the magicians he spends the majority of his time around, fast and loud just to get a word in edgewise. He learns about the history of the city and of the Montana and Petrocchi families and of the statue in the town square, all twined up together so tightly it's impossible to pick it apart in places. He learns spellcraft, the power of words on paper and off of it, which comes easily sometimes – like breathing or walking or falling asleep at night – and harder than he can bear at other times – like breathing or walking or falling asleep at night.

Learning not to miss home is harder still but eventually he manages that as well, even if he never becomes fluent at it. He keeps a photo of his family with him whenever he moves house, along with all of their letters and postcards from summer vacations spent without him. He keeps a chestnut in the pocket of his jacket, too. It becomes very dried up, but his fingers learn and relearn the smooth hardness of it.

…

England is dim and cloudy after Caprona, where one family or another kept the sky a bright, gem blue. The first color he sees on the ride from the train station is the lawn, that calm sea of green on which the castle floats. The rest comes in bits and pieces as he climbs out of the car: the hydrangeas blooming white and pink together in the same massive tree, a row of vividly purple crepe myrtle, masses of roses in every color known to man and some that must have been made up on the spot.

A better sight than all of it, though, is the gardener turning earth for a sapling near the western tower.

Zayn runs past the whole line of household and staff come out to greet him, past Chrestromanci and Millie and all the other smiling, welcoming faces. He skids a bit on the gravel of the drive and then a bit more on the grass. He all but tumbles into the gardener, who falls onto his backside under Zayn's sudden, eager weight.

His shoulders are much broader now, his arms finally look big enough for the strength he always had. His hair isn't as curly as Zayn remembers, but his nose is still a bit big and his smile's just the same.

Zayn sits right down beside him.

"Told you you were magic," Zayn says.

"It's only hedge wizardry," Liam replies.

"I did tell you, though."

"You also said you could turn me into a bear."

Zayn cups his cheeks, the scruff of Liam's facial hair bristly-soft under his palms. "I missed you terribly," he says.

Liam gets dirt all over his jacket pulling him into a hug.


End file.
